On June 24, 2021 Mevion Medical Systems reported that the first proton center in the Mountain West, the Senator Orrin G. Hatch Center for Proton Therapy, has opened at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah (U of U) and began treating patients on May 11th with the MEVION S250i Proton Therapy System (Press release, Mevion Medical Systems, JUN 24, 2021, View Source [SID1234584331]). Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mevion team successfully installed the MEVION S250i in 7 months from the delivery of the accelerator.

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HCI is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Mountain West and serves a geographic region that includes all of Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming.

"After more than a decade of monitoring and evaluating the evolution of proton therapy technology, along with the needs of our patients, we are excited to officially launch our proton center and to provide this extraordinary treatment option to our patients," said Bill Salter, Ph.D., Senior Director of Radiation Oncology at HCI and Professor and Chief of the Division of Medical Physics at the U of U. "Our initial experience of treating both adult and pediatric tumors has already made evident the unique clinical capabilities of proton technology."

The center features Mevion’s industry leading HYPERSCAN pencil beam scanning technology and Adaptive Aperture pMLC. The powerful duo provides faster and more precise dose delivery and minimizes damage to surrounding healthy tissue and sensitive organs at risk. HCI has also integrated a diagnostic CT on-rail system and a surface-guidance tracking system, enabling a state-of-art Image-Guided Proton Therapy (IGPT) configuration to align and treat patients with the upmost accuracy.

Thanks to the reduced size and complexity of the MEVION S250i, the HCI Center for Proton Therapy was placed in a small available space alongside HCI’s existing radiation therapy department. This significantly decreased the project construction and operation cost and allows the cancer center to share existing resources and give patients access to all of HCI’s cancer treatment and research offerings under one roof.

"It is to our greatest pleasure that the underserved patients in the Mountain West now have access to proton therapy," said Tina Yu, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Mevion Medical Systems. "We are honored to partner with HCI to make this happen and look forward to our many years of collaboration and research to further advance this superior treatment modality."

As the leading supplier of compact proton therapy systems in the United States, Mevion has been selected by more leading cancer centers, including NCI-Designated Cancer Centers, and has treated over 6,000 patients worldwide.